How welovedesigners started their web page design journey

Summary

Can you incorporate simplicity, elegance AND personality into an arresting blog design with lasting power? We need someone to redesign the blog at: http://www.entrepreneurslife.com/. The author has already had someone playing with the structure to get the basic layout (structure only, not look/feel) the way they’d like, so, you are really working from this: http://www.entrepreneurslife.com/_s…/blogtest/

No coding is needed, just the layered PSD file.

The only elements of the original design that must remain are a) some use of the panther, b) the structural elements of the sidebar (the second page w/the right hand sidebar), and c) PERSONALITY --- the author is insanely passionate about entrepreneurship, writes and speaks with personality and attitude ... the design needs to reflect that ... not bland, nameless, faceless, corporate boredom.

Killer reference given to the winner.

Please read the brief and the comments below, there is plenty of additional information there.

Company name

an entreprenuer's life

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

Can you incorporate simplicity, elegance AND personality into an arresting blog design with lasting power?

The only elements of the original design that must remain are a) some use of the panther, b) the structural elements of the sidebar, and c) PERSONALITY --- the author is insanely passionate about entrepreneurship, writes and speaks with personality and attitude ... the design needs to reflect that ... not bland, nameless, faceless, corporate boredom.

You are free to be creative as you like, with just a few elements in mind.

The author wants the image of the panther integrated in the site --- think of it as a sort of personal totem. He likes simplicity and elegance ... NOT bling for bling’s sake ... combined with some drama. Think old film noir movies filmed in black and white and the oft-quoted (for a reason) Apple site.

We'll provide a killer reference to the winner, and feedback to anyone who takes the time to submit a design.

Wants

Updated refinements AND a wireframe rough to work from can be found in the PDF below:http://www.cageserver.com/for99designs/cagesite.pdf

Please reference the PDF and the information below.

A few functional details:
- An original design.
- We’d like it designed for 1024px displays. - The navigation options on the right hand side need to remain structurally the same. So, the main “Channels” need to be present taking up two columns in the sidebar, the recent posts and tweets needs to reside in a single column in the sidebar.
- Did I mention simplicity and clarity?
- As the first block in the sidebar, we’d like to have a specially designed area for a welcome message and photograph of the author. See photo attached below.
- The header image will have several menu options as part of it, similar to how it is currently done at http://www.entrepreneurslife.com/.
- Also, the current "tagline" that starts with "Aggressive Marketing ..." ... that is going to change depending upon which blog they are looking at, and which section of the site they are in. It should *not* be part of the header image --- it can be immediately below it, but not part of the header image itself. I hope this is clear.Designs (or elements of designs) we love:
- http://vikiworks.com/ - love the background the header emerges from (very organic looking), love the drama, fonts are way too small for our needs. Structurally, this is a great match for the direction we want (see the PDF for more details).
- http://www.techcrunch.com/ - elegant, simple ... very clear text and layout of a lot of information.
- http://www.neil-scott.com/ - the elegance and simplicity, while still being bold. This is one of our current favorite blog designs. Obviously, we need to pack a lot more information into the screen.
- http://therelevantelephant.com/ - again, nice, simple and clean. We like the gradient header boxes on the left hand side.
- http://coda.co.za/blog/ - like the gray background and the black header, but would not want it on the entire page the way this design has it. we’d like something dramatic like this integrated into the header.
- http://ellislab.com/blog/ - love the deep red header (deep red, blacks and grays are the author’s favorite colors)
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog - the author loves this blog overall, especially the gray images in the background of the header.